“This picture I have never got a red cent for”, Astrup writes in the list of works he compiled in 1927. In connection with the solo exhibition in 1908 Astrup gave the painting to Peter Skagen at Bergen Art Society, in what the artist believed was in exchange for the return shipping of works lent out by owners in the Oslo area. Astrup felt cheated when he received a bill from “Irgens transport bureau” shortly after.

The painting depicts a funeral procession on its way to the graveyard, and is an example of Astrup's attempt to translate music to colours. Among the artist’s notes is a description of a country funeral in Jølster, which is focused on the song; “The primitive atmosphere, pregnant with the dissonances that come over one when one hears antiquated funeral psalms sung by rusty, old voices in the coarse bass of men’s voices, and the shrieking falsetto of old women. […] How can one reproduce something of this in colours?” The painting can be seen as an attempt to do just this. The landscape is coloured in large areas of caustic yellow-green in contrast to colder green and blue-violet tones. The network of wooden hayracks and the rhythmic line of figures dressed in black contribute to imbuing the motif with a musical undertone. This creates a dissonance, which can have shrill effect on the eyes, like the voices.

Nikolai Astrup Veien hjem

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Exhibited works

Olaves

Oil on canvas

1900 - 1901

Catalogue number [no]

Funeral Day in Jølster

Oil on canvas

1904 - 1904